by Mez Blume
I thought I caught Wattie and Grasshopper exchange a meaningful look. Before I could be sure, Wattie stood up and stormed out of the room without saying goodnight.
I had never been more exhausted in my life, so why couldn’t I just fall asleep? Every time I closed my eyes, the day would replay itself in my head: the stampede, the earsplitting sound of Lovegood’s gun firing, the blood matted in Crow Feather’s hair … and the way everyone had gone quiet when I’d asked about the Uktena Stone. Mr. McKay had said the stone was a legend, but legends can’t be stolen. Terrapin Jo really believed the stone possessed some sort of magic. What if he was right? After all, I’d seen magic paintings with my own eyes. Why not a magic stone? And Mr. McKay did admit that things had got worse for Nickajack ever since the stone disappeared. Could there really be a connection?
The more I thought about the Serpent’s Stone, the more I wanted to know. If I could just remember where I’d heard of it before.
I gazed at the wooden slats of the ceiling and screwed up my face, trying to remember. Imogen gave a little snort in her sleep, and, just like that, it came to me!
Throwing the quilt off my legs, I crept out of bed so as not to disturb Imogen. I thrust my arm under the bed and felt around until my hand landed on my rucksack. I’d thrown it under the bed in hopes the maid wouldn’t find it and carry it away with the rest of our modern apparel. I unzipped it, thrust my hand in and pulled out the two items I’d brought with me to 1828: my detective notebook and the little booklet I’d got that morning: Cherokee Legends. A beam of blue moonlight lit up the picture of the giant horned snake rearing its head back from the man with the stone held high over his head.
I peeled back the cover and ran my finger down the contents page until I found it: “The Legend of the Uktena.” My heart did a little jump as I rifled to the page and read by the moonlight…
This is what the old men told me when I was a boy. The Uktena is the great serpent who haunts the dark passes of the Great Smokey Mountains. He is mightier than the ancient oaks and recognisable by his horns, like the antlers of a buck, and by the diamond set like a blazing star in his forehead.
Uktena lies in wait for hunters and travellers in lonely places. No man, not even the strongest warrior, can look upon his shining eyes and rippling scales. He will live, but he will spend the rest of his days wandering the hills in madness. Even if the victim can avoid Uktena’s eyes, Uktena can still crush with his mighty coils or spit venom from his arrow-like fangs.
Only one man has ever outwitted the great Uktena: the wise medicine man Agan-uni’tsi, or “The Groundhog’s Mother.” He shot the serpent with an arrow through the seventh diamond on its back, straight through the heart. After seven days, he returned to the spot where the beast’s carcass lay, all but devoured by the ravens. There he found the stone from Uktena’s head.
Agan-uni’tsi thereafter became the greatest medicine man who ever lived, and the stone prospered the Cherokee of his village so that they always found game and defeated all their enemies.
I closed the booklet with a shiver. It’s just because my feet are cold, I assured myself. Obviously, I’m not afraid of a giant killer snake with antlers. I scrambled quickly back into bed and pulled the quilt up under my chin, glad to hear Imogen’s steady snoring beside me. I wanted to think, to make sense of this strange legend and all that I’d heard that night, but my thoughts were tumbling quickly into nonsense. In no time, sleep had me tight in its coils.
I’m falling again through swirling colours – purple like the mountains, green like the pine trees, red like fire. Then the colours form into a stampede of galloping horses, running circles around me so that I am inside a cyclone of colour. They get faster and faster until all the colours blur together. Then at last the swirling settles, and I am standing in a meadow, knee deep in tall grass.
A beautiful Cherokee woman with long skirts and a curtain of black hair down her back is holding her arms out to a baby with thick, black hair. The baby teeters forward on fat little legs and falls into the woman’s arms, giggling. The mother scoops up the child and swirls her around, then stops. She looks over her shoulder, right into my eyes. She smiles, as if beckoning me to come forward, so I do. Still holding the baby in one arm, she waves her free hand across the sky, and suddenly a forest appears, its trees covered in a whole rainbow of autumn leaves. Next, she moves her arm up and down in a wave-like motion, and a sparkling, turquoise river appears.
I walk to the water’s edge and peer in, but as I look, the water grows dark and murky, then starts bubbling up like hot tar. Before I can back away, a pair of antlers rise up out of the water, followed by a set of blazing red eyes. The giant serpent grows taller and taller, towering over me like a mountain, ready to strike. I have to run, to warn the woman that she and her baby are in danger. But my feet are stuck in mud like concrete. I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. A hiss like oil on a hot frying pan draws my eyes up, up to those vicious, glowing snake eyes. I raise my hands up as it spits black venom from its fangs. This is it. It rears its head back and strikes—
11
Bullseye
I sat up with a gasp. My hands flew automatically over my head to shield against the snake’s steel fangs before I realised I was sitting in bed. The droplets running down my temples were not venom spit after all; it was my own sweat. With a shudder, I looked beside me. Imogen was still in a deep, peaceful sleep. I decided on the spot never to tell her about the nightmare I’d just had.
The sky was only just starting to glow outside, but I was wide awake now, and not keen to re-enter my dream world. I slid my feet into my pair of soft, deer moccasins ― Ulma had set out a pair for both of us along with nightgowns ― and borrowed a crocheted throw off the end of the bed to wrap around my shoulders.
A strange sound in the garden drew me to the window. It was a sort of dull thud. It happened again. I touched my nose to the cold glass pane and peered out into the early frosty October morning and saw. A little way off in a grove of birch trees stood Wattie with his back to the house and a bow in hand. He nocked an arrow, took aim and let it fly. Half a second later, the thud came again.
Well that was one mystery solved. But already, a dozen other questions had fogged up my head like cobwebs from the moment I’d snapped out of my nightmare. My inner detective was hungry for answers, so I decided to seize the moment and go out to speak to Wattie.
Pulling the shawl tight around my shoulders, I marched across the dewy lawn, sidestepping a pumpkin patch and a chicken coop. Wattie heard me snap a twig underfoot and spun around.
“I hope I didn’t wake you, Katie Fire-Hair,” he said when he’d spotted me. In his deerskin leggings and a tunic, he looked full Cherokee.
“Oh no, you didn’t,” I assured him. “I just felt like seeing the sun come up on my first morning in Nickajack.”
He nodded and went back to his target practice. I sat on a stump just behind him and watched. He was an impressive shot, I thought, wondering how to start the conversation up again without sounding like I was conducting an interrogation. “It’s great news about Crow Feather,” I said brightly.
Wattie turned halfway around, his profile scowling. “I wonder who will be attacked next time,” he mumbled, then shot another arrow.
“Do you think Terrapin Jo is right? About that stone having something to do with it? … I mean, do you think it really was magic?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. But magic or not, that stone has caused more trouble than it’s worth.” He released another arrow, and it hit the target with a particularly hard ping.
I was worried that if I’d made him angry, that would be the end of our conversation about the Uktena stone, but then Wattie put down his bow and quiver and plopped right down on the wet grass, his deerskin-covered legs sprawled out in front of him. “They don’t like to talk about the stone because … well, it’s a long story, and not a very happy one.”
“You mean the story about the medicine m
an who shot the Uktena in the heart?”
He looked surprised. “No, no. That’s the legend of the stone. I’m talking about the story that happened just a few years back. About Old Grizzly.”
“Old Grizzly?” I asked, confused what a bear had to do with it.
“My father mentioned him. Jim Weaver’s his Christian name, but he’s always been known as Old Grizzly on account of the scar down his face. A grizzly gave it to him when he was trapping furs out West.”
“Oh. So Old Grizzly’s the man who stole the stone? The one everybody trusted?”
Wattie nodded, sticking a piece of long grass between his teeth. “That’s the one.”
“So, this Old Grizzly,” I began, trying to piece the story together bit by bit, “he must’ve believed the stone was magic. Why else would he steal it?”
“That’s just it,” Wattie answered, his voice rising. “Besides being an honest man – he was like a brother to my father and Terrapin Jo – well, he’s just not the type to believe in fanciful stories.” He shook his head before adding, “Of course, they say he took it for his wife.”
“What did his wife want it for?”
“It’s all hogswallop,” Wattie said, waving his hand dismissively. “They say she was some sort of sorceress and wanted the stone for her magic.”
I pulled my legs up under me on the stump and leaned forward. “What kind of magic?” Wattie shrugged. “Don’t know. I haven’t seen her myself since I was just a runt, and folk don’t mention it much around my family because … well, because of Ka-Ti.”
“Ka-Ti?” I asked, puzzled by the word.
“Old Grizzly’s baby daughter. That is, she’s not a baby now; she’s practically a woman.” I could swear Wattie blushed as he said the last bit. He cleared his throat before going on. “When Old Grizzly was thrown in jail for his treachery, Ramona, his wife, brought Ka-Ti here to us and asked my parents to look after her until Jim got out.”
“But why couldn’t she look after the baby herself?”
“With all the nasty rumours folk were telling about her, she felt she had to leave Nickajack, but she wanted Ka-Ti raised among her people. Among the Cherokee.”
“Wait a second.” I held up my hands, needing to rewind. “Old Grizzly’s wife – Ramona – she’s a Cherokee?”
Wattie nodded, but he was looking at me curiously. “What of it?”
“Oh, nothing,” I answered casually, but my head was stewing over all this information. The image from my dream flashed into memory of the Cherokee woman and the toddler … it had been a little girl. “So what happened to Ka-Ti?” I asked.
“We grew up together, she and I,” he said with a happy, far-off look. “Then, three years later, Old Grizzly was let out of prison. My mother wanted to keep Ka-Ti with us, but my father remembered the promise they’d made to Ramona and gave her back to her father. He could never come back to Cherokee Country after what he’d been accused of, so he took Ka-Ti away to the mountains.”
“Oh.” I was beginning to understand why the story was so difficult for Wattie’s family to recall. “Then, you never saw her again?”
To my surprise, Wattie grinned. “Well yes, I’ve seen her. And Old Grizzly too.” He lowered his voice as if about to tell me a secret. “In fact, I go to visit Ka-Ti every couple of weeks and take a bundle of goods to them from the shop.”
“But you just said—”
“I said Old Grizzly isn’t allowed in Cherokee Country, but he didn’t go far. After all, his wife wanted him to raise Ka-Ti near her people. He built a cabin up in Raccoon Mountain, just over yonder, across the Tennessee River. It’s about halfway between here and Hiwassee Garrison.”
The image of the Cherokee woman and the baby played across my mind again just as a crisp breeze rustled through the birch trees. I shivered. “Whatever happened to Ramona? Didn’t she ever come back?”
Wattie pushed himself up and brushed the wet leaves off his backside. He shook his head. “Old Grizzly won’t talk about her, but my mother reckons she travelled west to sell her trade. She was a painter, you see.”
I thought I’d swallowed my tongue. Wattie rushed over and patted me on the back as I leaned over choking.
“Are you all right, Katie Fire-Hair?”
“Fine,” I sputtered, wiping my watering eyes on the corner of my shawl, meanwhile trying to think of how to ask my next, burning question. “Exactly what kind of paintings did Ramona do… I mean, were they anything … out of the ordinary?”
Wattie scratched his chin. “I can’t say, really. She was gifted. I know that much.”
I could see I wasn’t going to get much more out of Wattie about Ramona. “When do you think you’ll visit Ka-Ti again?”
He stepped away and gave me a hard stare, as if deciding whether I could be trusted or not. “Can you keep a secret, Katie Fire-Hair?”
I nodded. He looked very grave, and I wondered what he was about to tell me.
“Grasshopper and I are leaving on a journey tonight. Just after the stomp dance. We’re going to Hiwassee Garrison to tell the Governor what Lieutenant Lovegood’s been up to. We’ll have to break the journey, and Raccoon Mountain is halfway to Hiwassee.”
“But your father said—”
“My father wants me to grow up to be a white man, go off to a university in New England and forget who I am. Well I’m a Cherokee of Nickajack, and I intend to stand up to Lovegood and anyone else who thinks they can bully us off our land.” In a fury, he picked up his bow, strung an arrow and let it loose.
“But,” I hesitated, not wanting to sound cowardly, “are you sure it’s a good idea? Going off like that against your father’s orders?”
He gave me a stern look, probably wondering if he’d made a mistake telling me his secret.
“I won’t tell,” I assured him.
He took a deep breath and blew it out. “You needn’t worry, Katie Fire-Hair. I travel for my father’s trade all the time. I know the route backward and forward. Besides, Grasshopper and I are nearly men. That makes us responsible for what happens to this village. The decision is made. We’re going.” With pursed lips, he turned back towards his target.
After a minute of feverish thought, I scrambled off the stump to stand beside him. I couldn’t let this moment pass. There was something in this story about Old Grizzly that had to be important. Magic and paint in the same place could not be all a coincidence. “Couldn’t we come with you, Imogen and I?”
He didn’t even give the idea a thought before shaking his head. “No, Katie Fire-Hair. But I’ve been thinking about it, and I will ask in Hiwassee Garrison if anyone’s heard of your uncle, Tom Tippery. It may be he has travelled through that way.” He started to string another arrow.
“But that’s all the more reason that we should come with you! If we do find our uncle, then we’ll be on our way. And anyway, we should be with you when you see the Governor. We are, after all, the only two people who saw exactly what happened to Crow Feather. We can testify!”
I watched as he seemed to be chewing over my arguments.
“And,” I added for good measure, “I’d really like to speak with Ka-Ti.”
I was surprised to see the frown on his face. “You can’t speak with her,” he said flatly before nocking the next arrow.
“Why not?”
He sighed and dropped the bow. “Because Ka-Ti doesn’t speak.”
I looked at him dumbly. “You mean she’s shy?”
“Well, there’s that. She doesn’t meet many strangers. But I mean she doesn’t speak at all. She’s mute. Has been since her mother left. Of course,” a grin began to play at the corner of his lips again, “she has her own way of talking.”
“How?” I asked.
“She speaks in pictures. Draws, paints. sometimes she used to scratch out her thoughts in the riverbank. It takes getting used to, but once you do, it’s … well, it’s like seeing things you never imagined before.” His eyes were glowing, but with one glance in my di
rection, he went pink and began to fiddle with his arrow’s fletching.
I sat silently for a minute feeling more strongly than ever that I had to meet Ka-Ti. There were answers wrapped up in this strange, sad story, I just knew it. “Wattie,” I said, breaking the silence at last. “Please let us come with you. We can help, and I’d still like to meet Ka-Ti, even if she can’t speak in words. Please.”
He clenched and unclenched his jaw as he thought. I felt sure he was about to say yes. Then, to my frustration, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Katie Fire-Hair. I admire your courage, but it’s just too dangerous. You saw what the forest is like. Bandits, outlaws…” He shrugged apologetically before letting another arrow fly.
I was far from giving up that easily. “If it’s all that dangerous, why don’t you teach me to shoot a bow? That way I can defend myself.”
Wattie looked sideways at me as if to see if I was joking. “Girls don’t shoot bows.”
“Sure they do. Plenty of girls shoot bows in the movies … I mean… uh…”
“Movies?” Wattie frowned.
I scrambled around for a cover-up. “What I meant was, if I moved to England, I’d be sure to learn how to shoot a bow. All the girls there do it.”
Wattie took his aim. “I don’t mean any disrespect, Katie Fire-Hair, but you’re not in England. You’re in Cherokee Country. And to the Cherokee, this is a warrior’s weapon.” He gave his bow a loving look. “The warrior doesn’t just learn to shoot. He earns his bow by practicing, first with a blowgun.” From a tall woven basket nearby, Wattie took a long piece of river cane and a small hide pouch. “If you wish to shoot, start with this.”
I looked at the blowgun uncertainly. It was nearly as long as I was tall. “How do I shoot it?”
“Like this.” Wattie took what I guessed was a dart from the pouch. One end was fletched with something feathery and soft, the other end was sharply pointed. He fed the dart into one end of the blowgun, held it up to his mouth, breathed in, and gave a mighty puff of air. I didn’t even see the dart until it landed with a thud in the target.